Many political conservatives and conservative Christians appreciate Candace Owens and Allie Beth Stuckey.  Until one recent show, the subject of this post, I had never seen a whole Candace Owens program, just clips here and there.  I had seen whole interviews by Allie Beth Stuckey on her podcast.  She deals with some unique subject matter.  Both are very popular, the former on Daily Wire and the latter with Blaze.

For a show episode included on youtube, Candace Owens invited her husband, George Farmer, a Roman Catholic, to debate Allie Beth Stuckey, a Protestant.  I watched all of part one and thought it would be helpful and informative to provide an analysis of their interaction.  Farmer grew up in England and attended Oxford.  He tells this story in the episode.  His dad converted to Christ from atheism, became an evangelical, and raised George this way.

Under the influence of a Roman Catholic scholar, George doubted the veracity of evangelicalism for Roman Catholicism.  Before he married Owens, he became a Roman Catholic.  Owens claims still to be a Protestant evangelical, leaning now Roman Catholic, attending Catholic church with her husband and children.

Allie Beth Stuckey grew up Southern Baptist, told the story that her family traces back Baptist in America for 300 years.  She remains Southern Baptist, but now claims to be a Reformed Baptist.  She considers herself a Protestant, Reformed, Baptist evangelical.

Perpetuity of Christ’s True Church

The Question

Farmer communicates his greatest conflict for staying Protestant and evangelical, a historical matter.  To remain Protestant, he would say that Christianity was lost before 1500, essentially no one was converted or a true Christian when the Reformation began.  In part one, Stuckey never addresses this seminal concern of Farmer.  Farmer never explains this conflict.  To start the debate, Candace Owens directed the debate by asking Stuckey what bothered her the most about Roman Catholicism, so they never doubled back to deal with the perpetuity of the church.

Before I move to what bothered Stuckey the most and Farmer’s answer to that concern, let me address perpetuity.  I would like to know how Stuckey would answer Farmer’s perpetuity conundrum.  I would join him in finding a problem with Protestantism or for Baptists, an English Separatist view.  Is Protestantism a restorationist movement, like the Church of Christ, Latter Day Saints, Apostolics, and Charismatics assert?

The perpetuity question also becomes one of authority.  How does the authority of God get passed to state church Protestants with their rejection of Roman Catholicism?  If Roman Catholicism represents an apostate body, how do they call themselves Reformed or Protestant?  Shouldn’t they make a clean break and repudiate Roman Catholicism as a true church?

The Answer

Protestants receive their authority from Roman Catholicism.  They must see Roman Catholicism as a true church through which God passed His truth.  By doing so, Protestants, including professing Baptist ones, also affirm a state church.  I couldn’t be a Roman Catholic or a Protestant.  Farmer exposes a major flaw in Protestantism.  There is a better way, really a biblical, right way — the only way.  Stuckey either doesn’t know it or doesn’t believe it.

The biblical, right way says true churches always existed since Christ, separate from the state church and known by different names.  The true church is not a catholic church.  It is a local, autonomous one.  Those churches did exist and passed down the truth.  They became known as Baptist churches.  By not taking that position, professing Baptists and Protestants play right into Roman Catholic hands.

Baptist perpetuity is mainly a presuppositional position.  Scripture teaches it.  The gates of hell would not prevail against Christ’s ekklesia, His assemblies (Matthew 16:18).  No one should expect a total apostasy until the saints of this age are off the scene, snatched up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 & 2 Thessalonians).  Until then, only some depart from the faith (1 Timothy 4:1).  True believers should just believe this happened.  They did until modernism crept into the Southern Baptist Convention and invented a different view of history for Baptists.

Sola Scriptura

What Verse?

Stuckey says her biggest bother with Roman Catholicism is the pope and the authority issue.  She asserts sola scriptura, the Bible as the only or final authority.  How does Farmer answer her?  He asks her for a verse or passage to prove sola scriptura.  She can’t do it.  She gives Farmer zero scriptural evidence.

I sat chagrined watching Stuckey’s non-scriptural support for her biggest bother.  Ironic.  Roman Catholicism doesn’t rely on scripture for its only authority and Stuckey has no scripture saying that’s wrong.  She said she recognized the circular reasoning with providing scripture for sola scriptura.  No way.

Farmer put Stuckey on the defensive and she tried to weave together some poor argument for sola scriptura from history.  Was Stuckey right?  Was there no answer to Farmer’s challenge?

Biblical Arguments for Sola Scriptura

What verse would you use?  I thought of four arguments instantly.  First, I thought 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

Scripture (1) throughly furnished unto all good works and (2) is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.  Every good work comes from scripture, no more or no less.  It is sufficient, that is, profitable for all of what verses 16-17 mention.  Doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness should come only from the Bible.

Second, nothing should be added to scripture.  It is the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3).  Revelation 22:18-19 commands to add nothing to God’s Word.  Adding to scripture brings severe warnings of terrible judgment from God.

Three, only faith pleases God and faith comes only by the Word of God (Hebrews 11:6, Romans 10:17).

Four, man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).  The converse is true.  Man will not live from something not the Word of God.  That includes the pope, tradition, what someone might call the wisdom of men.

I don’t know why Stuckey could not give this as evidence to Farmer.  She says she grew up in church and that the Bible is her authority, yet she couldn’t produce one scriptural argument about what bothered her the most about Roman Catholicism.

The Canon

As part of his argument against sola scriptura, Farmer used canonicity.  He said the canon came from Roman Catholic Church authority in a late fourth century council.  Stuckey sat there nodding, like she agreed.  Conservative evangelicals are not today agreeing with that assessment of canonicity.  I can say, however, that it was a typical Bible college and seminary presentation of canonicity thirty or forty years ago, maybe still today.

Farmer includes a separate church authority, making room to add the Pope and tradition as authorities with the Bible.  He uses this view of canonicity, an unscriptural presentation of canonicity.  Stuckey though sits and accepts this, by doing so encouraging viewers to turn Roman Catholic.  Owens should have recruited a better representative for evangelicalism than Stuckey.  She fails at her task, leaving viewers in greater confusion than when they started.

God used true churches, biblical assemblies after the model of His first church in Jerusalem and the early churches that one spawned, for recognition of the canon.  They immediately recognized the true, authoritative New Testament books, even as seen in Peter’s endorsement of Paul’s epistles in 2 Peter 3:15-17.  They hand copied those manuscripts and only those as a plain indication of their faith in them.  Councils were not necessary.  Today evangelicals often give too much credence to the Catholic councils as a perversion of biblical ecclesiology.

The Roman Catholic canon includes the apocrypha.  When someone sits silent to these additional books, that helps undermine true scriptural sufficiency and authority.  Accepting that Roman Catholic position of canonicity hurts sola scriptura.